Hi all,I just recently built my first hand plane and am very pleased with how it came out:

However, a good looking plane is useless if it doesn’t produce nice shavings. This is the kind of stuff I’m getting:

These shavings are coming from pine, but I experienced the same type of shavings from oak as well. When I make a pass with the plane, the shavings come off the board unevenly in little stringy parts (the boards I’m using are flat, so it shouldn’t be due to an uneven surface).

Things I’ve tried troubleshooting so far include:

1) Making sure the sole of the plane is dead flat in all directions2) Sharpening the blade many times3) Blade adjustments; depth, centering, etc…

I do know my mouth opening is larger than I intended to make – would a large opening cause these types of shavings? Or am I overlooking something else? I’m looking to get wide (as wide as the 2” blade) and thin shavings. Any advice on what to try next would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

I need more pics. How precisely flat is the iron? How truly flat is the mortice? How well does the wedge mesh with the iron? I would believe your problem would most likely be with one of these three things.

What’s the plane’s bed angle? Are you getting good contact with the wedge against the front of the plane iron? Any chattering? I’m guessing it’s a sharpness issue too, but I’ve used plane irons well past where I should have sharpened them and not had that type of shavings so the bevel up point is a good one too.

Just to add to the already good advise here, a large mouth opening will tend to allow much larger chips through, so we can cross that off.

Those are the kind of shavings you get from a scraper plane, which means the effective cutting angle is very high. It looks like your Hock blade is facing the right direction in the picture, if you have a bevel-down blade. Did you by any chance add a back bevel to the blade?

-Yes the sole was flattened with iron and wedge installed-Chip breaker has been tried in multiple positions, but in the pictures above it was about 1/16” from the blade-Bed angle is 60 degrees. With the wedge in between the blade and pin, there is no movement of the blade and no chatter-Plane blade bevel is 30 degrees

It will be a few weeks before I can get back to troubleshoot the plane again, but I will check on everyone’s suggestions. It seems like the consensus is blade sharpness though. I’ve been using the Veritas Mk. II Honing guide to sharpen to 30 degrees. I noticed that the blade was a little off from 30 degrees (maybe 30.5 or 31?) so I’ve been slowly grinding it down on sand paper + flat surface in order to get the blade bevel to the correct angle for the honing guide. I’m guessing I still haven’t gone far enough and and will continue sharpening!